Chapter 2

Florida was nice in Winter. Well, apparently it was nice all the time because the weather didn't really change much. Locals cursed the humidity, but James found it to be a nice diversion from the usual cold and windy attitude of mother England. While in Orlando, he would enjoy the heat.

He'd fully intended to go to the beach, swim and get a tan, maybe find someone to warm his hotel room. But his case kept him too busy and too far from sandy beaches, so he had to cope with the TV in his hotel room, which had a channel devoted to showing scenes of beaches… because why not? The room was comfy without it, but James supposed it did add a sort of ambiance.

It was a nice, quiet change from the stalking he'd been doing during the days – following a man who they hoped would divulge information about an organization called Spectre that was as hard to pin down as the name suggested. In the end, he found out about a meeting going down in France, but that wouldn't be for several days. Now all he had to fill his remaining time in Florida was his fake beaches in his plush and comfy hotel room.

No fireplace though. Well, his hotel room did have one, but it was digital and there was no crackling wood or heat to be had. Perhaps he was being too sentimental. It wasn't as though he lit fires regularly at home. He liked the view of a well kept fire regardless of its authenticity or how often he had one of his own, so he found himself staring at his fake fire for over an hour on the night before his return to London.

Stupidly, he thought of coffee and of Prufrock. But he didn't let any names enter his mind.

At least not until the next day, when he was back in his own country and done with MI-6 and, ridiculously, sipping the best latte of his life out of a tiny blue cup in Prufrock Coffee. That's when he let the names Q and Eve make it to the surface of his thoughts, and he looked around again to see if any possibilities were in the room. He wouldn't know for sure without hearing Q speak, but at least he could test his spying skills by trying.

Around red pillars and wooden counter tops, he saw at least three male and female pairs. One couple was far too young. Despite James' original thought that Q was young, he was almost certainly in university by now and the first couple was a pair of teens. The other two couples were unknown in age, old enough to be Q at least, but James couldn't imagine the voice on his machine coming from any of their mouths.

After several minutes, James glanced into his cup and saw maybe a sip or two left of latte. It seemed he would not be finding Q that day unless he went through multiple drinks. He liked caffeine as much as the next guy but not enough to ruin his blood pressure for a voice on the phone.

His two sips came and went. No new young men entered the café. So James Bond left with no more satisfaction than one normally achieved from drinking a good cup of coffee.

Stepping into his flat, he was not filled with the melancholy of the previous week. Instead he felt the normal, quiet comfort of being at home, and he felt his muscles relax slightly in the wake of it. Not with a smile, but at least with a calm air, he walked further inside, shedding his shoes and outer layers. See? He just needed to be home to feel better. He didn't need coffee or a mystery.

But speaking of both – his answering machine was lit up with a new message. Before he could convince himself otherwise, he hit the play button.

"Hello," came Q's familiar voice. "For the record, I also think this is crazy. Only a nutter calls someone they don't know, someone they've never even heard or know the gender of, to complain about life. But Eve found out about my mistake from last week and she says you might not even be a person, just a machine. And more so, she stubbornly refuses to listen to my problems this week – too damn busy at work. She told me to talk to one of my other friends, but if I'm being honest I don't really have any other friends. And now I'm ranting on a stranger's answer phone. I've lost my mind. I'm hanging up now. Goodbye."

How was it possible for a pointless rant to be endearing? And ultimately sad?

James was a solitary creature. He worked alone a majority of the time. He lived alone. He exercised alone. He did everything alone, give or take the odd talk with Moneypenny. But that came with the job. The less of a social life he had, the easier it was for him to take off at a moment's notice, the less he had to lie to a loved one, and the less leverage an enemy could hold over him.

But for a civilian as young as Q sounded? How did he only have one friend? How did he become so in need of conversation and an outlet that he willingly dialed a stranger and left a message?

James hit a different button on the machine and the mechanical woman's voice said, "Outgoing message. To listen, press 1. To record, press 2."

He pressed one.

"No outgoing message recorded," the voice answered. "To record a new message, press 2."

So whenever Q called, he just heard James' number repeated back to him – no indication of who he was reaching out to. If there had been a message, he'd have known immediately that he'd reached the wrong number when he tried to call Eve.

He pressed two.

"Please record your message after the tone."

Did he even have a plan for this or was he just going to rant like Q? That was a silly question. James Bond always had a plan.

Beep!

"Hello. If you have reached this message by accident, hang up. If you have important information to relay, continue only if it is life or death. If this is Q, continue as planned. Your messages may or may not be received in a timely manner, if at all."

Beep!

The machine replayed the message and James accepted it. He was not a chatty person, and he wasn't promising Q any sort of response, so it was an acceptable message. But he wasn't telling Q to stop calling either. As heartless as some people deemed him, James wouldn't take away what could be someone's only form of a healthy outlet. Just because James liked to drink as his outlet didn't mean he wanted to drive someone else to the bottle.

And it wasn't like he was calling this random person back. Calling a stranger might be a healthy outlet for Q, but James wasn't out of his mind. Letting some random civilian into his head? Into his life? That was too dangerous for both parties involved.

James checked his watch and then changed into his running gear. It was still early enough to jog but late enough that most people were heading home, so his route would be clear. He'd been lax on his daily jogs lately. It was time to clear his head of café frequenters and focus back on himself. Focusing on himself kept him happy and alive.

That's how he'd always been. That's how he needed to stay.


Paris was a gorgeous city… well usually. James had been there a few times and had the option to see both the glamorous façade of the city as well as the dirty streets and dark underbelly. Mostly he was in the underbelly, making it darker with blood but also a bit lighter for having one less criminal slinking about.

As cliché as it may appear, his favorite spot in the city was the Eiffel Tower. It had a great view from the top, or from any level to be honest, and there was never a shortage of good food to eat. People watching was never dull, and there was something calming about watching other people having a good time, regardless of how his day had gone.

Standing on the second floor by the vision well, James took pleasure in seeing visitors nervously take photos of how high up they were. It had been a long time since he'd been truly afraid of heights. The number of times he'd fought someone on helicopters, in planes, on cliffs – heights were an occupational hazard. Sure, the worry of falling to his death was still a factor, but he'd learned to ignore it.

A young couple snapped a photo and hurried from the edge just in time to bump into James' mark. The man grunted but waved off the apologies of the couple and then he was moving for the elevator. James moved swiftly and entered the parallel elevator just before the doors shut. On ground level, he stepped out and nodded at a woman walking her dog. She nodded back with a smile and flicked her wrist, jostling the dog, and suddenly she was being yanked toward the other elevator, shouting loudly in French at her wild pet.

The other elevator opened and the mark stepped out. The dog and the woman jolted toward him and temporarily bumped him back into the elevator's remaining occupants before they were ripped off in another direction. Adopting an air of concern, James ran to stop the dog, which came to an obedient halt in front of him.

"My goodness," James said, keeping his hand on the dog's head as he addressed the owner. "Are you alright, Mademoiselle?"

In a heavy French accent, she laughed once and replied, "Thanks to you, Monsieur. My apologies. I do not know what got into 'eem. He ees usually so well behaved."

"No apologies needed, Ma'am," James assured and took her hand in his. He brought it to his lips and kissed it gently. "We all get excited sometimes."

"Oui, Monsieur," she said, voice light and airy. "I… But I must be going. Mon mari is expecting me. Excuse moi." And she walked quickly away, the perfect air of embarrassment and fluster to her expression and gait.

After a short moment of watching her leave, James turned and strode off toward the Champ de Mars, the manicured lawn that stretched out from the base of the tower. He stopped at the tree line, shaded from the sun and prying eyes by what little foliage the tree still had in the cool weather.

Out of sight, he looked down at what he'd received from his pickpocketing partner. In her brief acquaintance with the mark, she'd managed to lift his watch. Perfect. James slid the device into his pocket and then calmly made his way back to his hotel. Another job done.

"A watch?" R asked when he linked video with her that night. "What do you want me to do with a watch?"

R was head of the I.T. department, and James didn't know her real name. Sort of the way he didn't know what Q's real name was – because it couldn't be Q. The difference here was that he'd been working with R for over a year.

"I thought you were I.T.," James replied dryly. "It's a smart watch with access codes to his mainframe. And it has a micro SD card slot with the card currently in it. There has to be something you can extract from that."

"What exactly do you think he carries around with him? Wouldn't he keep important things more secure?" R asked, already trying to use the wifi of James' laptop to access the watch.

"You'd be surprised how secure most people think they are," he answered and linked his fingers together in front of him. "Look, I know it has the information we need. When he entered the meeting with Blofeld, the watch didn't have the SD card."

"Well the signal strength of that laptop and the hotel isn't going to cut it. You'll need to bring it home for me to get anything from it," R said, sighing in frustration and stopping her attempt to hack the watch from England.

"Arrange it so I have a ticket for the next flight," James said curtly and ended the call.

There had been so many leaps and advancements in technology, but sometimes he felt the I.T. department, and the R&D department in general, at 6 was still failing to do small things. With the gizmos and equipment James had glanced on his brief visit to see I.T. once, he expected they should be well on their way to making hoverboards and teleportation tubes. Strengthening wifi and hacking a smart watch should be as easy as brushing their teeth.

They'd lost their previous head of R&D, a man named Boothroyd, a year or so ago. Perhaps that was why everything was stagnating. Maybe James should drop a suggestion to M about replacing the old man finally. But maybe he wouldn't. After all, it wasn't his decision to make, and he'd been getting on fine for years without all the fancy new tech. He could continue to do so now.


Several hours, a boring plane ride, and one unmemorable secretary later, R had the watch and memory card and James was on the roof lighting up a cigarette. As he let out the smoke, a short, cold breeze whisked by and pushed it all back into his face. He grimaced until the wind had finished blowing it past him and then stared accusingly down at the cigarette in his hand.

"I thought we had a working arrangement," he grunted and raised the fag back to his lips. "Like you're not killing my lungs fast enough, now you're after my eyes too." And he blew out the smoke to his right. This time, the wind let him.

"Talking to yourself, James?" Moneypenny asked as a way of announcing herself. "Not a good sign, is it?"

"It is when you need to straighten a few things out with Mother Nature," James replied and turned to meet her. "Did you need something?"

The dark skinned woman shrugged and held out a small to-go box. "Gift from Mother Nature's estranged sibling, Human Society." When James didn't immediately take the box from her, she sighed and rolled her eyes. "It's cake, James. Just take it."

And he did. "Why are you giving me cake?" He pulled the lid open a bit to glance inside and saw it wasn't chocolate, as he'd expected. It was strawberry.

"Friend of mine had a birthday party – small, because he doesn't like big events and doesn't have a lot of friends anyway, but the point is, we had some leftover cake and you need a little pep in your step too. So just eat the damn cake and say thank you." Moneypenny crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow as if to say 'will you dare to challenge me?'

It didn't take much effort at all to smile in the wake of her powerful attitude. "Thank you," he said honestly and took another drag of his cigarette. "Is this the same friend who likes to say deep things?"

"Yes and you're welcome." She turned and started to walk back toward the stairs.

"Moneypenny," James called out to stop her and dropped his cigarette. He stepped on it as she looked back over her shoulder. "The friend you keep mentioning – what's his name?"

Her smile teased a deep well of intent, but all she said was, "Daniel."

After a moment of silence, she continued walking and then James was alone on the roof again. Only now he had cake. He looked off into the city in the direction of his home and blew out air despite having no new drag of smoke hidden in his mouth.

"Well Daniel doesn't start with a Q," he murmured and then scowled at the city when he realized where his thoughts had gone once again. "Damn."


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